Game of Thrones author George RR Martin has responded to the Hugo award shortlists – which were hijacked by a high-profile, rightwing campaign for the second year in a row – by pleading with nominated authors not to withdraw from the prize.

Regarded as the biggest prizes in science fiction writing, the Hugos have been subject to controversy since 2013, when campaign group the Sad Puppies was formed to stop the awards going to works that were “niche, academic, overtly to the left in ideology and flavour, and ultimately lacking what might best be called visceral, gut-level, swashbuckling fun”. A breakaway faction, the Rabid Puppies, formed in 2015 and dominated the vote with their choices, much to the anger of other authors and voters. The 2015 Hugo awards were in the end a muted affair, with many categories going to “no award”, to avoid rewarding work picked by the Puppies’ campaigns.

Picks by the Rabid Puppies appeared on every category, with 64 of its 81 nominations making the ballot. Martin said the Rabid Puppies were “the big winners … It seems obvious that while traditional fans and the Sad Puppies have minds of their own, the Rabids just vote the way they are told to vote.”

Martin added that Rabid Puppies leader Vox Day had “played it cute” by nominating well-known authors “along with the usual spate of mediocrity, and a few choice picks that appear to be purely ‘fuck you’ choices.” The popular authors nominated by the Rabid Puppies – including Stephen King, Neil Gaiman and Alastair Reynolds – have been called “shields” by disgruntled voters online, with some believing these authors were deliberately nominated by the Puppies to make them withdraw, as other authors did in 2015. Martin himself felt they had been nominated because of their political views, “in hopes they would withdraw, or would be voted under ‘no award’.

“Withdrawing is the LAST thing they should do,” Martin’s blog continued. “I urge them all to stand their ground. They wrote good books, stories, graphic novels, they did NOT take part in any slate. In some cases they were largely unaware of all this … Punishing them … demanding they turn down this honour … simply because Vox Day listed them, is insane.”

Martin said he thought the best novel shortlist included “some very fine and worthy choices”, but said: “Best pro artist is a joke, short story is if anything weaker than last year, and best related work is a toxic swamp.”

Short stories up for the Hugo include If You Were an Award, My Love by Juan Tabo and S Harris, a Rabid Puppies parody of Nebula-winning short story If You Were a Dinosaur, My Love by Rachel Swirsky; Space Raptor Butt Invasion by Chuck Tingle, which promises “sizzling human on gay dinosaur action”; and The Commuter by Thomas A Mays. On Wednesday, Mays declined the nomination, as he was included on the Rabid Puppies slate and he did not agree with their tactics. “I hoped it would compete on its own with honour, winning or losing without a nod to anyone’s particular political intent,” he wrote on Goodreads.

The best related work shortlist includes Vox Day’s own essay on “social justice warriors”, SJWs Always Lie: Taking Down the Thought Police; and Safe Space as Rape Room, a collection of articles by Daniel Eness that alleges the science fiction community shelters rapists and paedophiles.

Martin conceded that the 2016 Sad Puppies campaign, led by author Kate Paulk, had been “open and democratic”, because it published a list of recommended reading for its supporters, rather than drawing up a specific slate for them to vote for, as the Rabid Puppies did. However, he noted that this year’s Sad Puppies campaign had “almost no impact … the Sads did get works on the ballot when their choices overlapped with the Rabids, to be sure, but very few works that were ‘sad only’ made the list.”

The Hugo Awards: George RR Martin, Vox Day and Alastair Reynolds on the prize's future

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Martin ends the blogpost by revealing plans to organise another Alfie award this year, the prize he set up to counteract the Puppies’ influence on the Hugo award in 2015. Named after the first Hugo winner Alfred Bester, the Alfies were awarded according to the Hugo voter numbers and nomination sheets with any members of the Sad or Rabid Puppies removed from the count.

Before the shortlist was revealed, Martin told the Guardian that he had become somewhat of a spokeperson against the Puppies’ campaigns because “I felt I had to say something and refute the Puppies’ claims that there was discrimination against conservative fiction. There have been plenty of conservative writers in science fiction. I think science fiction has always had both liberal and conservative writers, but there probably have been more liberals.”